A Rescue in Three Phases
by Killerturtles
Summary: "They were enemies, Simon thought to himself, slammed up against a wall and breathing harshly." In which Simon doesn't care enough and neither does Baz and no one really figures out that something is broken until it's been almost too late. Waring: depression, some language, mentioned sex.


_They were enemies, _Simon thought to himself, slammed up against a wall and breathing harshly.

_Baz has wanted to kill me since forever. _The bricks grind into his back unpleasantly when Simon unconsciously steps back.

_For Crowley's sake, he's a vampire! That's a new low. _Simon swallows deeply, flushes redly and barely avoids panting.

Baz steps closer.

_I don't want this, _Simon lies to himself as he reaches forward, reaching for Baz's belt and sinking to his knees. _I don't want this._

_..._

"Didn't see you at breakfast today," Penelope mutters. "Baz trap you in your room again?"

Simon's neck is burning - it always does, when he's embarrassed - and he purses his lips before shaking his head.

"Well?" Penelope hesitates. "What is it then?"

Adopting a mock look of concern, Simon faces his best friend. "Are you sure we should be talking in _class_?"

Penelope punches him. Once upon a time Simon used to have some consumptions about hitting girls but then girls started hitting _him_.

"I can still see you, you know," Penelope scornfully informs him.

_Oops. _Simon grins, loose and easy. Relaxed. Penelope cocks her head to the side and Simon remembers that he's not a morning person.

Unless, apparently, he's fucking his enemy, who isn't even a human. The smile slips and the shame starts sinking in. Simon shoulders it away easily enough.

He's had plenty of practice.

Thankfully, Penelope waits until class is out to comment. "So, that was an interesting array of emotions I saw crossing your face earlier. Want to talk about it?"

_No_, Simon thinks and that's what he's tempted to say for a moment. But he's knows they're all on edge from Simon's near fatal encounter with the Insidious Humdrum last year. He had been in a coma for two weeks and woken up sticky, screwed up and just past his sixteenth birthday. And so loyally he turns back to tell her that it's Baz.

Not technically a lie.

Penelope rolls her eyes. "Obsessed much?"

Simon shrugs, because they both know he is. "You're not the one with the evil roommate," he reminds her, though his heart isn't really in it. It's missing the fire but none of the disgust.

Penelope rolls her eyes again and Simon thinks they've been here before. They've been _there _before too.

He closes his eyes and -

_You're not whole. I'm you you you. _

The Humdrum's whispers echo at him and Simon's breath catches before he disregards the voice that sounds so much like his own.

Penelope is looking down at him concerned. He's forgotten how much taller she got between fourteen and now. He smiles weakly. "I think I'm going a bit crazy, Pen." He laughs, he jokes, he calls desperately for help with his already tensing again muscles.

She doesn't respond, but she lets him lean up against her and it's enough.

...

They check, Simon knows, at the hospital. At Redburn's. If the Insidious Humdrum had done anything to Simon. They'd spent three months checking and Simon had undergone every test he could ever dream up.

A two week coma and nothing else was wrong. Not his magic or his strength or his intelligence or his emotions.

Not, Simon supposed, his mind.

That's how Simon knew that everything, that Baz and this tension he couldn't contain that just built and built until he dragged the smirking idiot into their room and fucked was all on him.

Sixteen and he was mature.

Sixteen and he felt more alone than he'd ever felt before.

...

Everyone thought Agatha was gorgeous because she was.

Simon went on a date with her at the beginning of the year and that night was the first time he slept with Baz.

The date had been nice. It had been normal. Nothing had tried to kill them. Agatha was lovely and caring and attentive and there was a chasm miles wide stretched between the two of them. The words had felt forced in Simon's mouth and the laughter expected.

Half way though, Simon felt his eyes starting to droop and Agatha looked almost sad when she called it off and said they would be better as friends.

After, Simon sat in bed for an indeterminate number of hours and feeling like liquid frozen solid, unable and unwilling to move. Baz arrived late and drunk and called him pathetic, said he couldn't even make it with the nicest girl in the school and Simon had wanted nothing more than to punch him (lie).

He sunk his teeth into Baz's plump dead lips instead and felt something. Baz made a shocked sound and shoved him off.

They'd circled each other for a minute and then slammed into each other again, Simon lonely enough and Baz drunk enough and it'd been hot enough for a sober repeat in the morning.

Two months past and neither said a word, until Halloween.

...

"Ashamed of me, are you?" Baz whispers, Simon's dick in his hand. "Pet."

Simon couldn't look anyone in the eyes the next day.

...

"You've got to concentrate," The Mage demands. "You're the most powerful wizard this generation. You're our only chance at defeating the Insidious Humdrum." He peers more closely at Simon. "You're full of life Simon and he is death. This is your strength."

Simon struggles with himself before half-pleading, half-hopeless, "is there anyway that the Humdrum is - could - drain me? Long range, some sort of leftover connection from last summer?"

"Hmm." The Mage doesn't speak. He steeples his fingers on his temples and exhales slowly.

Simon waits. He isn't sure if he's supposed to stay or if he is supposed to leave, but he can't quite bring himself to care either way. He stands and he thinks and he remembers.

_I'm what you left behind. _

_I'm what you couldn't keep. _

It's the Humdrum again and it's got to be magic because Simon can hear him ceaselessly and loud, following an already engraved groove in his mind and Simon ... knows the Mage won't find anything. He keeps takes the words and keeps them tight and wrapped around his mind and wonders if they're true.

_We're one, _are what the voices whisper now.

"There's nothing," the Mage says after what must be hours. "You're perfectly fine, Simon. It's just you in there - you're all you and you've got your life back," the grinning mage reassures him, patting Simon on the head while his words are the next words he's got trapped in his head, ricocheting around, even as he wants to protest that he's not life, he is death.

That the Humdrum is a vibrate child and Simon's the one who's dead inside. That he doesn't feel anymore, that he's largely numb to the pain.

But it's not him and the Mage would know. It's not the Humdrum; it's just Simon and this will pass because it isn't a magical curse, it's just - who he is.

...

The orphanage, in years past, had been most full around the holiday's and, the loneliest. Suddenly, everyone was here and everyone was rushing forward to this beautiful day and no one had time for you. There was love for everyone and cheer for everyone and there were enough people that you started tripping over them.

But it was the loneliest when you were in a crowd and Christmas time was the worst.

Simon thought holiday's were a gift wrapped and given to him with a note reading: do not open _yet_.

And Simon was waiting for someone to tell him when, but they never did and then the year past and his friends forced it out of his head.

...

"You need this, don't you? Need me, like this - like - ah - aaah," Baz moans out the fourth, fifth, sixth time they've done this and it's true so Simon stays and lays in the shattered remains of Baz's bed until the morning.

(he always takes a shower immediately; now, he can't bring himself to care or pretend it isn't going to happen again).

Baz opens his mouth when Simon steps out of the shower the next morning but Simon's combing his hair so viciously that, for once, he doesn't push it.

"Thank you," Simon mumbles on his way out.

"You are the weirdest fucking asshole," Baz tells him in the hall between second and third period, shocked that Simon had noticed, and just like that, the event is forgotten.

...

Penelope goes on a date with Lewis and Simon really approves because Penelope's only dated assholes and Lewis isn't.

Lewis is smiling and shy and talking to Simon about his feelings while Simon avoids _him_.

Avoids Baz, because Baz is the bad habit he can't break.

...

"Snow!" Baz struggles - writhes - against him. "Not now!"

"Stop," Baz tells him on Friday night, but Simon just kisses him again and his protests fade away.

Waking up after that is the worst Simon's ever felt (why couldn't he _stop_? why did he need this like breathing? what's wrong with him?) and he gets up and wanders around the ground for four hours, until the sun starts poking it's head up and he finds himself outside Agatha's dorm covered in sweat (things have been awkward since the date).

"I'm exhausted," Simon tells her, and Agatha persuades her roommate to leave them for an hour. It's a big deal, or it should be, but the roommate takes one look at Simon and tells Agatha that she knew she should have spent the night at Mel's anyway.

"Come in," Agatha says, gently.

"There's nothing wrong with me," Simon says at the door. He doesn't move. Agatha moves to touch his arm and Simon flinches violently away before turning and leaving (running away).

...

Later, he sees Agatha and Baz talking quietly in the hallway and a red rage starts filling him, like a fire or a sickness and it consumes him.

He smashes his way through the week and Baz eventually fucks him into the mattress and it's finally slipping away, leaving something hard and solid behind.

...

It's better, a bit, for a bit and Simon's grades raise and the Mage looks at him approvingly and reports that he's glad he resolved his problems.

...

"You're fucked up, mate," Baz likes to tell him. Only now it's got a hint of surprise and worry.

"You're one to talk," Simon snorts and wonders if these comments are coming off as antagonistic as they used to.

"Whatever." Baz rolls off his bed and Simon grabs his wrist. Baz elegantly raises an eyebrow. "Unless you'd like another round - ? Then I've got work."

Simon forces his fingers to let go and leans back against the headboard. _Yeah. _He thinks. _Me too. _

He get a 68% on the test and hasn't turned in homework all week.

...

Simon smiles and goes down for breakfast and Penelope talks him into visiting the hospital room because he's utterly exhausted.

He slept eight hours last night and eleven on the weekend and he hasn't looked at his sword or used it once in seven months and he's exhausted.

He's fucking, rarely and working never and it's the most exhausted he's ever been and Penelope doesn't know what to think. Baz visits him the in hospital bed and Simon hates how needy he is, how quick he comes and how much he wants to take and take and take from this - this thing with - him.

They let him go home in the morning and Penelope starts following him to his dorm after class and forcing him to work.

...

Baz tries to kiss him, one night when he's sitting in bed, watching the clock tick closer to midnight and Simon punches him.

...

They're in class and Simon cuts his arm on a tube and doesn't notice. "Oo! Tough boy likes it rough," Baz contributes and it's worse because he _knows. _

He knows how utterly wrong and sick and incomplete Simon is and he never stops reminding him.

His finger brush Simon's when they walk down the hall.

He calls him _sweetheart _and _pet _in his ridiculous drawl and Simon's head always perks up in response.

He responds to Simon's insults with, "blow me," and later that night Simon does.

He cuts Simon to pieces and they fuck each other to tears.

...

"I'm broken," Simon's eyes are clear. "I'm - I - I've been sleeping with Baz. What's wrong with me Agatha? Why can't I - why aren't I -"

Simon's eyes dull and his voice is heavy and trembling at the end and he barely bring his eyes up to face Agatha's judgement.

But Agatha isn't judging, she's just smiling incredulously. "There's nothing wrong with you, Simon." _I know! _Simon doesn't scream. _I know I know I know! _"Baz is ... err ... I mean, I bet he's good, huh? In bed?"

Simon's nodding - emphatically - before he can stop himself and before he knows it, Agatha is laughing.

And then Simon is too and the last person who made him laugh was Baz, a month and a half ago.

The third quarter ends and Simon still hasn't failed anything, but it's a close thing.

...

"You're depressed," Baz announces, flouncing gracefully into their room after spring break. Simon just looked at him blankly.

"No," Baz continues, and he's serious for once, Simon can read it on his face, "I mean it. I've been thinking about it all semester and - you should be on medication."

It's Baz and Simon doesn't know how to respond to what he's saying, can't even comprehend the words.

"Or treatment," Baz continues. "Therapy at least."

Simon closes his eyes and cries.

...

The first days of meds doesn't do anything.

Neither doesn't the second day or the third week or the fourth month.

...

Penelope cries more than Simon and it fills him with the familiar self loathing. She's a bit more horrified after he comes clean about Baz - furious, actually.

"What the hell were you thinking!? He _tried _to _kill _you if you've forgotten!"

"C'mon. S'not that bad."

Penelope stormed away and didn't talk to him for two days.

...

Agatha came daily and mentioned that she was proud of him.

So did Baz. Simon didn't know what to make of it and so didn't question it, appreciating it more than anything.

...

It was Lewis who brought Penelope around and Simon never loved Lewis more than he did then.

...

Agatha and Penelope have been friends since childhood and Simon's only recently joined the group and now they've died many times over and they look at him like he's supposed to be good and on top of it and he's supposed to care and figure out what to do.

But they stop, after, and Simon doesn't know if that's better or worse.

...

He decides better after three weeks of failed medication.

...

Simon hadn't wanted to go at the time. He'd fought it with everything he could, which wasn't anything at this moment.

It changed on the night before the semester let out.

Simon spent the entire night at the top of the tower, standing on his tip toes at the edge and trying not to throw himself into the lake below.

In the morning, it was Baz who found him, half frozen and barely consciousness.

...

On October 5th, Simon smiled and felt free. Felt the emptiness recede a bit and laughed.

Things got better after that.

...

"Why?" Simon asked Baz, two days after he gets out of the hospital and starts on his first set of meds.

"Because I love you too," Baz replied and _oh _Simon thought. _That made sense. _"So?" Baz tapped his skull. "Sex?"

Simon smiled. Widely. "Yeah."

...

"I love you," he whispered in the morning. "Thanks."

Baz smiles.

...

Years later, Baz'll still wake with the same nightmares of finding Simon's broken and battered body at the bottom of the tower, still remembers with perfect clarity seeing the unmade bed and the chill and pulling out a locator spell.

Still remembers Simon's body, shuddering and shaking and leaning up against the wall tilting downwards.

Remembers, "fuck, Simon, fuck, are you okay?"

Remembers not getting a response, remembers Simon, comatose and sinking into his arms sobbing wildly, uncontrollably, ceaselessly.

Simon still wakes up in the morning wishing he had jumped that night, sometimes.

...

"I love you too," Baz says and Simon is thinking that yes. That's what this was. I love Baz.

And Baz is smiling.

Later is for other things, now is for holding on to that moment of happiness as best as Simon can. Therapist will tell him that, frequently, and other things too, but this one Simon already knows.

**fin. **

**A/N: So guess the Buffy roles? I originally had Lewis doing some of the things Agatha did because he was Tara slash I really wanted to parallel Buffy but it was confusing so i cut him/her out slash replaced him with Agatha for clarity. Which is ironic because that sentence probably made no sense. Anyway. Hope the Buffy season six themes were involved. **

** What did you guys think?**


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